This book is one of the most quoted and misunderstood books of all times. To understand it, I had to reread several versions of the complete Hill library. And I am still reading in the books in two languages to get the deeper understanding. Some people will tell you, the version of 1937 was the original, some pay thousands of dollars for a used one, printed in 1937. But there was another version before the first printing of Think and Grow Rich: “The Law of Success in sixteen lessons” – a former course which can be downloaded here for free: http://4motivi.com/books/hill/lawofsuccess.pdf. It contains some content, you wont find in any of the “Think and grow rich” – book versions from 1937 until today.

But all of these versions didn’t include a manual to the Thinking as Hill meant it: Thinking as constituting a future reality. Thinking as a connecting to inner sources. Thinking as a reframing process of the human mind. This continues with other parts, e.g. which have been called Hill’s braintrust. The present understanding of a braintrust today is a kind of inner circle where people mastermind towards their goals (manuals for example in the book “Teamworks” by Barabara Sher). But Hill mentioned an imaginated braintrust! A braintrust, which was available everywhere for him, even with people who have been lived long time ago. A braintrust triggered by his imagination which led him to intuition and inspiration and ideas, he was sure that they weren’t his own or “created” by him, but which arised when he called the braintrust and literally asked for help.

If you really want to understand the gist of Hill’s teachings don’t try to read abstracts of his books. I highly recommend to reread his books (printed versions) over and over again, mark passages, write about your thoughts in a daily journal as if you would become an apprentice of Hill. That will lead you to W. Clement Stone and some biographies of the contributors of Hill’s teachings. If you want to have fast access to an understanding of the success principles, you might be interested in the books and teachings of Bob Proctor as well, especially in his “Thinking into results Coachings”, which includes a very good process by rewriting goals and answers in a repeating iterative process. You can get a free book of Bob (You were born rich) here and also an audiobook (The Success Puzzle) for free here.